


Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps

by Ladycat



Series: Married [3]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Marriage Proposal, always a girl Rodney
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-13
Updated: 2014-02-13
Packaged: 2018-01-12 06:20:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1182895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladycat/pseuds/Ladycat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oh, yes, John had a plan. He really did. He’d worked on it for almost three weeks, hands clammy and cold whenever he thought about it. It was a good plan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps

An eerie silence fell over the lab.

John was aware of it, distantly. It wasn’t… _completely_ unexpected, mostly since in John’s plan he wasn’t going to do this where it seemed he _was_ doing it: in the middle of a very busy, very _nosey_ laboratory full of scientists who lived, breathed and found insights through gossip. Oh, yes, John had a plan. He really did. He’d worked on it for almost three weeks, hands clammy and cold whenever he thought about it. It was a good plan.

He _wasn’t following the plan._

Along with the not-completely-unexpected silence surrounding him, John was aware that certain words he’d trained himself _not_ to say were falling out of his mouth. These words included ‘church’ and ‘flowers’ and ‘white dress, whatever you want’. It was like some sort of bizarre possession, a goa’uld with a penchant for cliché taking over and making him say the exact wrong things.

And he couldn’t stop. He was _trying_ , each new so, so wrong word ringing like a gong inside his head, and if he could just get his damned jaw to stop opening, his tongue to lie still and please, please _stop talking_.

“… so what do you think?” he finally finished, flushed and breathless and wincing.

Dead silence. No one was even _breathing_ while a nail bitten down to the quick tapped a full, slanting mouth. This went on for long enough that John realized he was going to have to think of some sort of distraction, because Miko was tiny and easily excitable and blue was not her color.

Eventually, John said, “Um.”

“Are you asking me what I think you’re asking me?”

John stopped grimacing when he realized there was no accusation in the tone. If anything it was pretty even, which left him trying to _swallow down overwhelming terror_ like acid reflux with a few knives thrown in for kicks. “Yes?”

Sharp, sharp blue eyes, the kind of eyes that never missed anything no matter how often it seemed like they did locked onto his face. “You sound hesitant. I dislike that.”

“I—this really isn’t how I wanted this to go,” he confessed. If he thought it’d win him points, he was ready to tug his collar away from his neck, or scuff his foot, or rub the back of his head, any of the things that had worked in the past. But under _that_ gimlet gaze, training took over and John couldn’t move at all. “I mean, I wanted it to at least be private.”

“But you can’t help yourself when you’ve got something you _really_ want to say. I would have thought the black ops training would’ve beat the eager puppy parts of you into submission.”

The only possible response to that wasn’t one John could display in public, so he kept up his mostly-stoic mask and tried not to squirm like a, well, puppy. Who’d been kicked.

He’d been so _careful_. He’d planned it out meticulously, not at all like his normal planning which invariably involved thoughts like _well, that seems like a good way to handle it_. This time there’d been actual _thinking_ , with weighing of options, and composing—and recomposing, and _re_ composing until John was pretty glad computer recycle bins didn’t overflow the way physical ones would have—speeches so John would say the exact right thing in the exact right way.

His window was narrow enough as it was, and John knew it wasn’t going to come around twice.

Not for one Rodney Meredith McKay, dressed in the white lab coat that emphasized her curves and the tumble of auburn curls that always escaped her bun, who was watching him with an expression that was so very neutral that John started thinking a little hysterically that this might just be a deal-breaker. A real one.

The way nothing else ever really had been, before.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, Mer’s eyes abruptly narrowed. “You’re sweating,” she accused. “You’re—oh.”

Her face was so expressive, each thought and emotion laid out with high definition clarity and John could see as the question actually _hit_ her, instead of just her reacting to his performance. Her eyes widened just a little, mouth opening—

And then John was looking at the empty space Meredith used to occupy.

“Okay,” he told the watching lab. “That went well.”

* * *

Colonel Carter had told him, “Working with our scientists is a little different than most of the other joint civilian projects the Air Force is involved in. I’ve read your file, Major, I know about your academic experience,” which John had translated into _we know you’re actually smart and I’m smart enough to guess just_ how _smart, buster_ , only with Carter’s ironic, and ironically welcoming, gaze, “and I think you’ll fit in really well here. But there’s going to be a few weeks of culture shock, so don’t take it personally. They don’t see the military the same way others do.”

It was true that working with the scientists of Area 51 was _very_ different than most of John’s military career, but it wasn’t something he’d had a problem with. At least, not the way the Air Force expected.

A few weeks later, Colonel Carter had sat him down in the cramped back corner of her office-cum-lab, and offered him a smile that was full of relief. “So. No to the culture-shock?”

Given John had just come from another impromptu game he’d mentally titled _distract the scientists by telling them funny stories about math problems he’d known and loved_ and had had to be _dragged_ away from Doctor Z, he'd let himself grin pretty smugly. “I think I’m settling in here just fine.”

“Good. That’s good, Major. Your reports have been excellent so far.”

John hadn’t needed to translate that. Colonel Carter was one of the most self-possessed, confident women he’d ever met, and for her to be nervous enough to engage in chit-chat about his reports—and it clearly was chit-chat, the way her shoulders were steadily rising and her gaze kept flickering—meant something was coming, something that she’d wanted him to mentally prepare for. 

“Ah,” he’d said, lightly. “Do I finally get to meet your chief of science?”

Carter had laughed, ruefully, and said, “You might actually regret that I’ve accelerated our time-table. Sometimes rewards… aren’t.”

“I’m career military, ma’am.”

“Yes. I know. If you’ll follow me?”

Area 51 was a huge, sprawling complex. While a lot of those buildings, now oddly attached wings, still retained their exterior look of bunkers built in the fifties, the insides had been remodeled extensively. The newer additions, to John’s later dismay, actually _looked_ space-age worthy, and included all the amenities picky, cosseted scientists who rarely left their labs and didn’t actually understand the need for routine hygiene and regular meals when they were caught up in something, might need.

So far, John had spent most his time in the older buildings, since his actual _job_ was to ensure the base’s security and he needed military personnel to accomplish this. Unsurprising to no one, the military were placed in the worst of the rooms. John didn’t mind.

Or he hadn’t until Colonel Carter unlocked a door of what _looked_ like a bunker. John had stood with his back almost touching the door, taking in the way sunlight filtered through windows no one saw from the outside, sweeping over the machinery thatlined the edges and a great deal of the center of the floor, leaving everything glittering and new, almost unreal despite several weeks learning just how real most of this tech was. A lot of the scientists—bustling and hustling, chattering with their usual jay-bird disregard of who might be listening—were familiar to him, the ones that John had mentally tagged the smartest, working with the air of those who knew and loved their jobs.

And above all there was a woman at the back, red-faced and furiously shouting so the whole place echoed with the strength of her ire, glaring at a shame-faced young Asian man who looked like he wanted to sink into the floor. No one was really paying attention, all working around the dressing down the scientist was receiving, except how _everyone_ was paying careful attention. Another glance at the layout, and John noted that despite how crowded the floor, there was a deceptively careful organization to the chaos, allowing easy mobility from one table to the next, and all of it, all of it had been designed so the shouting woman, with her hulking computers blinking and beeping in quiet harmony behind her, would be the center of everyone’s attention, queen bee to an incredibly active hive.

“Dr. McKay?” Carter had called.

Cutting off mid-rant, Dr. McKay, so far only a legend to John's knowledge, had stomped her way up to the front of the room and glared at John. He’d wanted to tell her that really, that kind of look _didn’t_ work on him, not after years with his father and the various boarding schools John had been forced into.

But the sheer _power_ of that gaze turned her rather plain features into something runway models couldn’t ever hope to achieve, something alluring and beautiful and _dangerous_ , blue eyes glittering with so much intensity they nearly glowed. “Hi,” he’d said, smiling cheerfully as he offered her his hand. “I’m Major John Sheppard. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

“Whatever,” she’d said, refusing to take his hand in favor of turning her glare to Carter. “This the new monkey?”

“He’s the new on-base commander, McKay, yes.”

McKay ignored the implied reprimand in Carter’s tone with a wave of her hand. “Fine, fine, whatever. I’m betting a week. Who’s wants to waste their money and actually bet on two?” The offers came slowly, but rose into a clamor when neither Colonel nor Major did anything to stop it. McKay gave him a fatuous smile. “Place your bets with Simpson,” she’d said, loudly. “Welcome to Area 51, Major monkey-boy.”

* * *

When people asked when he’d known, usually looking like they'd just seen the face of the devil and didn't understand why someone would willingly subject themselves to that, John usually said that it was recognition at first sight. 

That wasn’t quite true. 

It was the moment right after, when she’d looked at him like a bug unworthy of even being squished, as it would take a second of precious time. When she dismissed him, the same way she dismissed almost everyone, entirely certain that he was a stupid grunt—another monkey-boy—and despite John’s entire lifetime of being _John_ , for once, he'd wanted to prove her wrong. He'd wanted to prove that he was _smart_ , maybe even smart enough for Doctor Rodney Meredith McKay, smartest woman in the galaxy.

He’d never wanted to do that, before. 

* * *

“She didn’t come home,” John said, miserable. He was stuck in the chair that’d been designated as his since nearly day one, curled around the metal table that Mer preferred to work on. He felt hung over. He wished he _was_ hung-over. “She’s never not come home.”

“What about the time you finally came home from MSX-838? She stayed at the labs for three days, then. Or when you two were fighting. Do not ask me for specific instances, Major, for I do not have enough time to list them all.”

Okay. That was a good point. Fortunately, John had a better one. He stared hard at the back wall where several cots were laid out, some of them occupied. Then he looked at the room that was supposed to be McKay’s office and was instead more like her personal apartment, its door swung wide and the lights on to expose every inch of its empty space.

“Do you see her there?” he demanded.

“Ah. No,” Zelenka conceded. “No, I do not.”

“If she doesn’t turn up soon, I’m activating her subcutaneous transmitter. I don’t care what General Landry says about wasting resources.” He wasn’t going to cry. He hadn’t cried since his mother died when he was in high school, and he _was not_ going to cry.

“You know she will not leave the lab,” Miko told him, earnestly, as she walked past. She did everything earnestly. Especially her laps around John, so she was never completely out of earshot. “So she will be back! And then you two can talk and… fix. Things.”

John let his head thunk against the table. Right. Fix things. Mer was one of the best at taking remnants and shards and slotting them back together again, her fingers magic and her mind too fast to keep up with as trash was turned back into useful gadgetry that only she could figure out.

But she had to _want_ to.

After almost a year working here, certain rhythms had been established. The first was that no one intruded on the Major’s personal life, no matter how on display it often was, because it meant that if you were _lucky_ then you only had to deal with the Major punishing you. The other was that John was the darling of the labs, adored by almost all of the female staff, and whenever Mer wasn’t around to glare everyone into submission, he was treated more like a prized pet than their last line of defense against invasion or attack.

This was _despite_ having seen him executing said duties, and the body count that usually occurred after.

John let the world turn without him for a while, eating when he was given food, getting up when gentle, usually female, hands took his and led him this way or that. Around dinner time some of his marines furtively entered the lab and politely requested that John be transferred to their custody for a while. John actually woke up a little at that, angrily demanding that show him what they’d done during the past day.

He purposefully ignored the way several people—scientist and military both—sighed with relief when he started yelling. He knew he was being managed. He didn’t _care_.

Meredith wasn’t there, wasn’t picking up her cell phone no matter who called, and John had done a lot of incredibly stupid things with his life, but he was pretty sure this trumped all of them.

He wasn’t sure how to recover from it, either.

Meredith… Meredith was _his_ , his everything. He'd spent years walking around like a living ghost, one who smiled and laughed and looked pretty real, but _wasn't_. He'd been nothing, before her, just another soldier eaten up inside until it rang empty and malleable, smart enough to know how damaged he was, but not invested enough to do anything about it. She'd made him fill all those empty places back up, silencing the echoes and giving him a sense of self he hadn't had since college, since all he cared about was pissing off his father and getting back in the air as often as he could.

She made him _want_ things.

And the thing was, the thing that not even Meredith believed, he would have loved her anyway. She didn't have to do a damn thing for him, he still would have fallen head over heels in crazy, absolute love. There was nothing about her that wasn't stunning, not her looks, not her vicious, abrasive personality that did little to hide her inability to lie, the way she could never truly protect herself no matter how mean she was, no matter how mean she _meant_ it. He loved how brilliant she was, how no one else could keep up with her and she never felt lonely. He loved every single one of her flaws, all the things that made him crazy— _especially_ the ones that made him crazy—because even when they fired off words that should've created mortal wounds, he knew with a certainty that was precious and rare that it was _okay._ That it would never be too much, never be _enough_. They could ride this roller coster forever, too adrenaline-drunk to feel the bumps, screaming together with every exhilarating plummet, and every time they'd ratchet back up again, creaking and climbing their way to the top, John knew it would be with Meredith by his side, her hand held tightly in his, matching him breath for breath.

Except he’d done something unforgivable. He’d forgotten he was talking to Meredith and instead, had spoken to _Nancy_.

That was the realization that kept him distracted and pitiful as sticky Nevada sunlight shaded into cool evening. Lights bloomed up around the labs, globes that no earth light bulb could ever match, spreading pools of golden mock-sunlight until it felt like it was day again. John glanced up at the huge clock near the doorway and winced. Nine. Mer had been gone over twenty four hours.

“Okay,” he said, creaking as he forced himself upright. “I’m gonna. I’m gonna go file a missing person’s report. And then I’m going to hijack the _Daedelus_ ,” he added, casually, “and beam her into a locked cell.”

“Ah, yes. Because this is the way to make her see how she is being foolish.” Zelenka wasn’t a man to roll his eyes, but he looked like he wanted to. “Sit, Major. She will be back soon.”

Halfway onto his feet, which were numb and didn’t want to support him, John paused. “Know something I don’t, Doctor Z?” And if so, why hadn't he mentioned it, oh, say, _yesterday?_

Zelenka, however, was used to being glared at by someone a lot scarier than John. “Many things. Many, many things. I also know that Meredith is not the coward you think she is.”

His stomach dropped. “I—when have I _ever_ given you the impression I think she’s a coward?”

Returning his gaze steadily, Zelenka was suddenly every inch the one of the few friends Meredith had managed to keep since her post-graduate work. “When you started believing that she would rather run away than fight with you. Sit _down_ , Major.”

John sat.

An hour later, the door to the labs opened and Meredith walked through. She looked harried, her hair out of its customary bun in dandelion wisps wearing the exact same clothes as yesterday, but the expression she wore was about as pensive as someone like Mer could ever look. She looked… nervous, waiting with unusual patience for Lt. Green to scan her and verify she was who everyone knew she was, somehow small and seemingly fragile under the huge white garment bag she carried.

A _garment_ bag?

The moment Green finished the scan and nervously pronounced her okay, the labs emptied. Those who were paying attention urgently tapped the shoulders of those too deep in their work to notice the currents and within thirty seconds, nearly a hundred people _vanished_.

“Well, at least they’re learning,” Mer said. “Stay there.”

John stayed, blinking owlishly as Mer stalked into her office and slammed the door behind her. The window shades rattled as they were pushed into a ‘closed’ position, leaving him just as alone as moments ago. His skin felt too tight, stomach twisting into knots that tore under the weight of their own pressure. Just because she was back didn’t mean it was okay to fold her into her arms, to touch her and make sure she was okay, that she was _real_ , smelling of musk and ozone from computers and really, genuinely Meredith.

John told himself that if he could just do that, then he’d leave. Gracefully.

He was completely lying.

When the door finally opened, John spilled out onto his feet. It wasn’t precisely flight and it definitely wasn’t fight, but he had to be in a kinetic position, able to move whichever way Mer directed. He was so intent on making certain he was poised for her whims, in fact, that he didn’t really look at her until she grumpily cleared her throat.

“A _hem_?”

John looked up. Then he said, “Oh.”

A dress. Meredith wore a dress. It was a sheath, or at least that's what John thought it was called, something that followed the contours of her body, highlighting each curve with the kind of loving detail that John usually had to use his mouth to achieve. He loved the lushness of Meredith's body, loved how _womanly_ it was despite the clothes picked strictly for comfort and never at all to show off how she looked.

This dress did. It skimmed over her like water, light refracting into dazzling, rainbowed colored points as he looked at her, couldn't _stop_ looking at her. He had to follow the way the dress curved over her breasts, demure despite the strapless cut, exposing the delicate line of her collarbone far more than her cleavage. His eyes tracked downward, the way the bodice narrowed, then flared around her hips, the dress falling straight to pool gracefully at her feet, somehow looking _right_ , instead of the inevitable extra yards of fabric that sometimes appeared on dresses. 

It was beautiful.

 _She_ was stunning.

And the dress was _white._

“I don’t know how you can really get a good look at it all the way across the room, like that.”

“I’m good, Mer.”

“Oh. Well.” Her left hand dipped, fingers curling the way they always did when she was confused and not sure how to handle it. “Well?”

He swallowed, voice rough. “It’s. You’re gorgeous.”

“I was talking about the _dress_ , Sheppard.”

Another sign of stress. Hearing it got John to stumble forward until he was close enough to touch, the tips of his boots just edging the fabric draped around her feet. His skin _itched_ to touch her, but it wasn't right, yet, and he stood his ground. “The dress doesn’t stop you from being gorgeous, Mer.”

“Of course it doesn’t, it’s just cloth, no matter how artfully put together. But does it make me look better?”

John still didn’t have Mer's complete romantic history. For a woman who let the world see everything unshielded, she could be secretive when she wanted to. But she wasn't the first incredibly intelligent, driven woman John had met before, and combine that with what stories she _had_ , and John had a picture that did little to reassure him of how she'd been treated before. John ached at the tone of her question, wanting nothing more than to erase it with his hands, his mouth.

Not yet.

“You’re gorgeous,” he repeated, taking a single step forward. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that, not in public, and not—not anything like that. I don’t even _want_ all those things. I had them, once, and they didn’t mean anything. This should mean something.”

“You’re very nearly incoherent right now," Mer said, face tightening the way it always did when Nancy came up. It wasn't often that John talked about his ex-wife, but whenever she came up, Mer always got _quiet_ and vicious and almost always ended up baking for him. "Fortunately, I _am_ a genius and I’ve figured out your bizarre code.”

"My code?" He had one. He absolutely had one.

Mer gave an unimpressed sniff, but when she spoke, the words _tumbled_ out of her, so fast that John had to concentrate to understand. "It can’t be in a church. You know I’m not religious. And unless you really _want_ the next apocalypse to occur before its normal springtime arrival, our families are not invited. Well, maybe Jean. He can come, I suppose, because he’ll never let me hear the end of it if I _don’t_ invite him or that hellspawn of a woman he married and their unnaturally adorable child. I don't want to the room to be big, because I know you'll want security and I do not want the entire base to show up unless we invite them and they have to give us presents, and oh yes, _I_ get to pick the registry, I was wondering if [ThinkGeek](http://www.thinkgeek.com) had one. And I don’t want flowers, because I’m allergic, which you _know_ and—”

John didn't actually get it until she mentioned her brother, when all the knots inside his stomach released with a surge of adrenaline. He _dived_ forward, cupping her face like it was made of glass, crushing her mouth to his because he knew what those words meant, now, and he knew what he hadn't done before when he'd gone on and on in his moment of sheer insanity. 

He hadn't ever _asked_. 

"Meredith." He was grinning, beaming so hard it was complicated to kiss her. “Will you marry me?”

Her huff was absolutely unsurprising, warm against his mouth. “I just bought a _wedding dress_ , you idiot.”

“After disappearing for almost a solid day.”

“Oh. Perhaps I should’ve told you yes before I left? But dresses like this one get snatched up faster than you would _believe_ , and while it pains me to admit that my staff talks about things so utterly inconsequential during the work day, one of the geologists, the one who talks like a mouse staring down a hawk, is getting married and she had magazines out and I just _happened_ to see this dress and the only place it was sold in all of Nevada and I. I wanted it. So I drove to Las Vegas and bought it.”

John stared at her.

“I only really figured it out after it was in the car," she confessed. “I, um, started shaking. I stopped so I could eat, but it wouldn't stop and of course I couldn't drive like that, so I found a motel. And then I slept until a few hours ago, which I really, really didn’t mean to do. I didn’t. I just wanted the dress, and I was so _angry_ that you wanted to have it in a church, because suddenly we're _religious_ without you telling me and. I kind of forgot.”

Her phone was probably dead, John realized, pressing his forehead to hers. It was always dead, that was why they usually paged her instead of calling her whenever she was needed. It was why John usually assigned a marine to follow her around, her own living blackberry, which he _hadn't_ done yesterday because he'd been too focused on actually getting out his speech and had wanted the nominal privacy.

And the rest of it was so very _Meredith_ that everything just stopped, steam rising up and taking all his worries and fears with him. They were going to have a _talk_ later, and John was going to find one of the damned communicators Simpson was working on and surgically implant it in her, just in case, but that, too, was what made them who they were, and how they got along. 

He kissed her again, slower and a little more sultry this time, purposefully sweeping his tongue against the roof of her mouth, hands describing circles on her cheekbones because he _knew_ what that did to her. Maybe it was mean of him, and very probably petty, but he loved the way she melted when he did that, her knees going out without a sound because she knew he'd catch her. Which John did, kissing and kissing and kissing her more.

It was John's favorite form of punishment, since Mer _hated_ swooning for him. But today, John felt he deserved a little swoon and let his hand splay wide over her back, keeping her steady.

When she was moaning softly into his mouth, arms curled around his neck, fingers dragging languidly through his hair, John pulled back enough to whisper, “Mer. Marry me.”

"Didn't I already answer that already?"

John was so close that their noses brushed as he shook his head no.

"Oh. We're really bad at this, aren't we?"

"Mer... "

“Yes, yes, of course I will," she said. "Of course.”


End file.
